Last time I fled. Last time I couldn’t handle it. But here? Here there’s nowhere to run without making a scene. Without dragging attention to us. Without turning this moment into spectacle.
So I do the only thing I can: I face him head-on.
9
OLLIE
“Rafe.”The name leaves my mouth like it’s been waiting behind my teeth for eight years.
He turns fully toward me—no escape routes, no Vinny shepherding him away, no studio staff pulling him behind a curtain—and for a second, the whole room narrows to his face.
Hurt, first. That familiar, hollow hurt I put there. Fear too—quick and sharp, like he’s bracing for me to swing another wrecking ball through his life.
And then something else, smaller. Softer. So faint I almost convince myself I imagined it.
Hope.
It hits me like a punch, and my lungs forget how to work.
I can’t make a scene. I can’t corner him. I can’t stand here and demand anything in front of his bandmates and my sister and Marco and half a room of people who’d love to turn this into gossip the second they get the chance.
So I grab the first safe thing I can: the song.
I swallow, forcing my voice to be steady. “I’ve… never seen you perform that one live.”
The words hang between us. They mean more than they should, and they give me away.
Rafe’s eyes flicker—surprise, then something that looks dangerously close to pain. His throat bobs as he swallows. For a heartbeat, he looks like he might not answer at all. “Yeah,” he says, voice low. “That was… the first time. Outside the studio.”
Outside the studio.Like it’s been locked away, kept contained, never let loose where it could bleed into the world.
My heart knocks against my ribs.
Of course it was the first time. Of course it was tonight, of all nights—when I bought a table that didn’t exist and flew across the country like my life depended on it and walked into this room at the exact moment the song climbed into the air.
Serendipity. That or the universe laughing in my face. There’s no doubt—none, not to anyone in our orbit—that the song is about me—us. Not after the way he looked when he sang it. Not after the way the lyrics landed like confession.
I blink slowly and force my mouth to work again. “It was… beautiful,” I manage.
His gaze holds mine. Shell-shocked. Exposed. Like he doesn’t know what to do with the compliment because it isn’t about the music. It’s about the fact that he wrote me into something permanent again.
Around us, the air feels thin.
Eli is hovering a step away, grin gone, eyes alert. Miles stands slightly to Rafe’s side, shoulders squared in that protective way of his. Drew has gone quiet, watching like he’s trying to read the imminence of a storm before it hits. Vinny is a dark shadow at the edge of our circle, pretending to scan the room while actually scanning us.
Marco is behind me, close enough that I can feel his presence like a hand at my back, ready to pull me away if I do something stupid.
My sister’s on the other side, her face carefully neutral, but her eyes flicking between me and Rafe like she’s watching a magic trick and trying to figure out how it’s done.
No outsiders yet. Not really. But it won’t stay this way long.
For a charity event, it’s oddly tense at the edges. Not inside—inside it’s contained, curated, safe—but I clock the way Vinny and Seth keep drifting, never fully settling. The way staff are tighter than they need to be, eyes tracking doors, radios tucked behind ears. Like the building is trying to pretend it’s just a fundraiser while the world outside remembers Steel Saints are Steel Saints.
I caught a glimpse when we arrived—fans pressed to barricades, phones up, faces bright with that hungry kind of excitement. It’s always loud, apparently. The kind of crowd that doesn’t care what the night isfor, only who’s in the room. It makes my skin prickle now, the knowledge that “private” is a fragile word when people want something badly enough.
I force myself to shift gears. To breathe. To act like a normal person who isn’t standing two feet from the man he married in secret. I turn slightly toward Eli, letting the conversation widen. “Your dad,” I say, because it matters. “I’m glad he’s doing better.”
Eli’s expression softens immediately. Gratitude flickers through the tension. “Thanks,” he says, voice rougher than he probably wants it to be. “Yeah. He’s… he’s doing really good.”
